As the mountain lions of Southern California approach what some experts call an “extinction vortex,” environmentalists are demanding that state officials grant the big cats protective status — a move that could potentially ban development on thousands of acres of prime real estate. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE
The future is looking increasingly bleak for some Southern California mountain lions. Urban encroachment, inbreeding, vehicle strikes, rat poison and wildfire have all taken their toll on cougars living in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains. Now, research published Wednesday suggests there’s an almost one-in-four chance the charismatic cats could become extinct in those...
Somehow P-64 figured it out. Unlike his fellow mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, the four-year-old cat—a young adult by mountain lion standards—learned how to safely get from one side of the 101 to the other. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE
Beth Pratt is working with government officials, industry, and the local community to fundraise for a bridge that might save LA’s mountain lions from the grim future predicted for them: extinction within 50 years. Aliya Jasmine accompanies Pratt on a 5 day 50 mile hike to retrace the steps of P-22. CLICK HERE TO READ...
By now you’re no doubt familiar with the life story of P-22, the Hollywood mountain lion who’s made a home for himself in Griffith Park. After being born somewhere in the Santa Monica Mountains, the young prince – his father was P-1, the first king of the Santa Monicas – spent his earliest years learning...
Four new mountain lion kittens have been found by researchers studying the wild cats living in Southern California’s Santa Monica Mountains, wildlife officials announced in video posts Tuesday showing the blue-eyed babies meowing and one feisty one hissing and even taking a swipe at the person filming her. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE
As a kid, Beth Pratt-Bergstrom watched nature shows like “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” and tasted the salt spray off Cape Cod with her father at the helm of their skiff. So when she came to California to fulfill her dream as a naturalist, she went straight to Yosemite National Park to see bears. And to the...
by Louis Sahagun of the LA Times As 101 Freeway traffic streaked past, a dozen conservationists and fundraisers gathered this week just west of Liberty Canyon Road in Agoura Hills, their eyes alternating between maps they carried and the contours of a canyon where mountain lions hunt and breed. But it wasn’t the big cats...
Photo Credit: National Park Service [Editor’s note: This commentary is prompted by a rancher’s move to kill one of the Santa Monica Mountains’ beleaguered mountain lions after one or more of those lions killed ten alpacas and a goat. As we published this piece, the owner of the unfortunate livestock was reportedly negotiating an alternative,...
Photo Credit: National Park Service It was drizzling and gray, late fall, on the old Rickards Movie Ranch, high in the Santa Monica Mountains, in rural, red-state western Malibu. Bleached skulls were tacked to the outside wall of a stage-set saloon; rusting wagon wheels leaned at angles. A hand-painted sign announced a “Public Hanging, 5PM.”...
